ICC slams U.S. decision to sanction the court's president and a senior prosecution lawyer

The ICC calling this a "flagrant attack" on its independence is a little rich coming from a court that indicted an American ally's sitting prime minister while Hamas commanders walked around Gaza unmolested. The Hague can vow to "continue seeking justice" all it wants, but the credibility problem here isn't Washington's sanctions pen, it's a tribunal that seems to find its spine only when the target is a democracy.

Sanctioning the court's president and a senior prosecutor is a blunt instrument, no question. But the ICC has spent years asserting jurisdiction over a country that never ratified its founding treaty, going after American and Israeli officials while giving actual authoritarian regimes a pass more often than not. That's not "independence." That's an institution picking fights it thinks it can win against countries that still respect legal norms enough to feel the sting.

Nobody should pretend sanctions on judges are a great look for the country that lectures the world about due process. It's fair to ask whether this sets a precedent we won't like when applied to us by someone else down the road. But the ICC doesn't get to cast itself as the wounded party while it's actively pursuing war crimes cases against a U.S. ally still fighting a war it didn't start. Independence is supposed to mean impartial. This court has made clear which side of that line it's chosen.